Except for the mention of the World Trade Center, this could be a telling of the US involvement in Vietnam.
Back then, it was the highly dubious Domino Theory that hawks waved around to browbeat anyone suggesting that such a war was un-winnable, morally indefensible, or just plain hair-brained.
Today it's the equally dubious umbrella of Terrorism.
Having recently watched Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary, it seems nearly impossible to understand the thinking of the war's supporters. Unless, that is, you replace the word "Communism" with "Terrorism."
I just finished reading Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, which is a story of Vietnam told through the lens of the experience of one particular American officer, and later civilian consultant: John Paul Vann. I heartily recommend the book - winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and authored by someone who was on the ground in Vietnam on and off during the war.
The book was published in 1988, so any parallels that are evident to Afghanistan and Iraq are not the backseat driving of the author.
One parallel, out of many, is that Vann many times lamented the lack of devotion the South Vietnamese Army had to the cause of Vietnamese independence. They largely wanted to avoid actual combat and profit off the American military machine by selling services, re-selling war materiel, accepting bribes for the other side, etc. And Vann said many times in the book that if he himself was a young Vietnamese, he would join the NVA (the North Vietnamese Army). And further, that he admired the grit and devotion the NVA had to the cause of independence.
Indeed, one could fill a page of further comments on the parallels: asymmetric tactics, politically powerful generals who lied about prospects for winning, presidents who kicked the can down the road, inability to win "hearts and minds", blaming the press when bad news gets out, ease of bombing versus difficulty of holding territory, "nation-building", installation of American-backed Vietnamese leaders (often emigres) who have no credibility in the country...
It is actually quite humbling. We should have known better.
Of course, the right answer was that we couldn't take on all of those burdens, not even one, really, not for long. But in the aftermath of WWII, I think it's not surprising that this wasn't understood.
Then what's our excuse this time?
I wonder if that implies that the world should've gone full communist. That the attempts to stop that was just delaying the inevitable, even though the delay seems very successful right now.
I wonder if socialism would've ended up as authoritarian as it did if it hadn't been fought like it was.
[1] As opposed to what every disinterest person knows, that war is terrible, impossible to control and casts long dark shadows into the future.
For example during the Obama administration (which increased the use of drone & missile attacks globally) they posted this inditement of the assassination without trial of a teenage American citizen:
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-ki...
During the course of the Vietnam war, the communism revolution in China lost it mojo, and the impetus to spreading revolution throughout Asia declined. Viewed as a delaying-action/fighting-retreat the US involvement in Vietnam went on long enough to achieve its strategic aim.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Also, the comment takes a significant step further into political flamewar. Can you please not do that on HN?
If anything the Russians are proving that you can intervene and be successful if you actually have any sort of coherent strategy and the right allies on the ground. They are the ones bringing an end to this bloody affair (with a lot more blood but still).
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Syrian_Civil_W...
So for 3.5 years the US tested the "let's stay out of it and see what happens" strategy (for the most part). What happend? 6 million people internally displaced, 5 million refugees outside Syria, 500,000 people dead. Iran, Russia, Hezbollah, Assad emerge as winners. Well, that really worked out. Not to say they wouldn't have messed it up by intervening but this bad? Hard to imagine.
EDIT2: I also understand as a non-american that it's a lot to ask of the US to take care of the world. But if it doesn't, who will? What happens in the rest of the world ends up impacting the entire world, including the US. Maybe I'm too naive though :(
Also, given the nature of the activities, it's difficult to find authoritative sources, but I believe there were some WikiLeaks that had diplomatic cables discussing this.
Also if you read Syrian and Russian news, and the Syrians are certainly highly motivated to defeat ISIS as it's trying to take over their country, and the Russians are highly motivated to protect their ally, they both say the US has seemingly been helping ISIS as much as fighting it.
ISIS was formed due to the power vacuum left after the USA withdrew from Iraq, largely by the former officer corps of Saddam's Iraqi Army, who had been left disenfranchised after the policy of de-Ba'athification [1] of the Iraqi government, replacing a vaguely competent government with a completely incompetent government.
ISIS was a problem of the USA's own creation, just like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and the current Iranian regime.
You know what I'll say? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is.
But what motivates people to sign up, go through months of training & travel to far off foreign lands to fight? Without those motivations, the desire to defend the 'person next to you' would only manifest when your homeland was under threat of invasion.
I guarantee that any general staff whose wives & children are in the affected area and who will be there for the next decade will figure out how to pacify the region to the level of a Chicago or Detroit.
You haven't demonstrated (1) and it disregards movitations such as a desire for advancement (higher ranks), or not getting shot at (lower ranks), and (2) can have many outcomes (there are faster ways to get home for an individual than winning a war), the least probable of which is the outcome you "guaranteed".
You're merely appealing to emotion while simultaneously disregarding all other (and much more relevant) factors leading to a drawn-out war.
On warships, where will the family live? Will we have extra cabins on them for people's family? The extra load on the ship's sustainability seems like it would significantly increase costs and/or reduce the amount of time between resupplying. I think that's unworkable.
Likewise aircraft. Preumably people's family don't get in the plane with the crew, so they stay at the airfield accomodation? That's often quite some way away from the danger, so it seems that it would just be a big expense and inconvenience with no other effect.
In these cases and with land forces, of course, the family woudn't want to be there, so they'd have to be rounded up and arrested and effectively imprisoned. What a legal nightmare that is! Need some big changes to the law to make that possible. Wouldn't be surprised if it required changes to the US constitution too. Running prisons of US citizens in Iraq and Afghanistan seems ridiculous. I suppose if the choice was running these prisons or just not invading, maybe the invasion never would have happened.
I guarantee that any general staff whose wives & children are in the affected area and who will be there for the next decade will figure out how to pacify the region to the level of a Chicago or Detroit.
Do you have any evidence behind your guarantee? You seem to be saying that the general staff just didn't try hard enough, and that they'd try harder if their family was there. I'm sure they would feel more motivated, but being super-motivated isn't exactly a guarantee of success.
Every victim gets a time slot.
But, you should know, the article did mention the casualties, at least glibly. "Many more Afghani's have died than were lost in the 9/11 attacks", is the only context the author can find, to appeal to his readers.
Its a sad state of affairs when the worlds greatest nation is populated with its worst cowards. Americans should have a War Channel that shows them what their military-industrial-pharmaceutical masters are doing around the world, 24-hours a day. Only then would the honour and pride demanded of American servants of its military be placed in the proper context.
To be honest I don't see any evidence of Americans being bigger cowards than anybody else. Also eg European media does exactly the same sort of thing. I suspect it's pretty much a global phenomenon.
I had just hoped that, of all outlets, NYT could at some point grow past it's navel gazing self, given how relatively balanced their reporting is in many other fields.
"Not supporting the troops" is a conversation ender up there with accusations of racism and sexism. But the issues there are much more complicated than no-one being interested.
Also, the NYTimes is eerily quiet about the role it and the rest of the media played in pushing for the war in iraq. No censure, no penalties, no nothing when they lied to the american people.
Reinstate the draft.
That might seem counterintuitive since that would give us a lot more soldiers to use, but it would give a lot of families, a lot of Americans real skin in the game.
Wasting soldiers is easy as long as most people dont care and dont notice. But when it is your daughter/cousin/ uncle/parent someone you know for a majority of the population it becomes a very serious matter.
I say this as an ex-army soldier. I will be honest and say that I didnt enjoy my time in the military very much, and forcing thousands and thousands of youth to go through it means a lot of pain and uncomfortable situation, I think the benefits would outweigh the sacrifices made to make this happen.
An alternate plan would it to be mandatory that family members of elected officials to serve in the military and in wars, personally. (Not just sit at a desk in DC pushing buttons) But there is so much corruption in those systems that the children would probably be protected one way or another.
What do people who are not a part of the military care about non-intervention? There is a reason we viliify the draft-dodger who becomes a politician and sends others sons off to war.
Well yea, that is what the parent comment explicitly advocates.
The problem is that US voters are insulated from the horrifying effects of war and thus are not inclined to avoid it.
Thus, the parent advocates achieving non-interventionist policy by giving Americans voters consequences through the draft.
So kind of roundabout, but such is often the only viable way in politics.
What I see as striking about the foundation of Qanon, is that their setup for the conspiracy theory, involves an almost leftist condemnation of the existing power structure in the US. And I agree with the general thrust of their diagnosis. This condemnation of some vary obvious problems in the US is actually kind of rare in the “mainstream media.” It’s strking a chord with many ordinary people.
On the particulars, as to who is behind the grand “conspiracy” and who is working for our salvation, they are completely off the rails. I was just surprised that their introductory propaganda didn’t sound as crazy as I expected.
We should choose, as a society, to make war uncomfortable for us. It is the moral choice. We should have a draft, which puts the children of the wealthy and powerful at risk. We should have extra taxes, and ideally there should be rationing.
Then see the popularity of diplomacy rise.
If you're wealthy its super easy to avoid going to war, it doesn't matter which country we talk about. Bribe physician to have some made-up condition (ie Trump), or get drafted but end up doing some safe job on military base back home/outside of any real danger (i think Bush jr).
Wars are fought by poor under-educated classes (thats where drafting/hiring is aimed at), smart person sees how pathetic the causes are, how incompetent political and military leadership is, and how stupid it would be to lose life or health for no good reason (and very probably introduce hefty chunk of evil into this world).
You can get all the adrenaline thrill doing extreme sports (and much more), you can get paid better elsewhere and it must be kinda hard to strike the patriotic tune when country being attacked by your government is half across the globe, never set a military foot on US soil nor threatened it in any way
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/world/threats-responses-i...
Many more where that came from. There is a case to made that the US wouldn't even be in Iraq if not for the undying support of the Bush administration's agenda, by none other than the New York Times.
Bush declared a national emergency after 9/11, and renewed it every year. Obama did the same. Trump the same. No reports to Congress. Congress has never asked for a report. Nothing but "the threat continues". [1]
More recently Trump used it as a way to force retired Air Force pilots back into active duty.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act [1] https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/14/perm...
All else aside, that just ain’t right.
I mean, it seems obvious and I've never had to deal with this(does it rely on em or screen percentage sizing?!), but the way the Times formats the article seems to play particularly well with zoom.
